LEST WE FORGET

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 24, 23 October 1918, Page 5

LEST WE FORGET

TERRIBLE STORIES FROM EMANCIPATED CITIZENS

HORRORS OF GERMAN OCCUPATION

VEIL LIFTED FROM LILLE, TOURCOING & ROUBAIX

London, October 21. War correspondents give terrible peri pictures of German brutality in the emancipated cities. Mr. Beach Thomas writes:—"Tho bloody agony,of the British prisoners and the French and Belgian women cry from the streets of all these towns. A British chaplain at Lille, who saw the black hole of a prison with its shifting population of 800 prisoners, and who was present daily at the progressive deaths of starved, and bullied men, and who read the burial service over 200 Englishmen who died under tho oppression, has cbrroboratora from Bohain and Ostend among self-sacrificing men and women, who suffered blows, and i imprisonment in thoir ondeavolirs to save' tne prisoners from starvation. They saw men tumble in the streets from sheer inanition. The Germans indulged in reprisals for invented crimes. They shelled civilians in a' village near Lille because a French ship bombarded Alexandretta, Thoy gave the British prisoners no food for three days because, so they eaid, German prisoners were under shellfire on the Somme. Fate of the Women, "I have sworn testimony from Lille, Tourcoing, and Roubaix that they snatched in the middle of the night thousands of women away, dying men were left alone, and many mothers were not allowed to say farewell to their daughters. For six months there was no news, and tho first they heard was the return of their once innocent daughters, aged, dirty, and worn after months of forced labour in barraoks, mean, filthy, and cold. Roubaix and Tourcoing alone supplied 1800 of these women slaves. The Germans.' brutality was only exceeded by their meanness. Tlwy gutted every house and faotory, and paid for nothing except food and drink, for whioh they paid quarter the price in paper money. I went to a convent for teaching sisters to see a friend. 'Is it really four years/ I. asked, 'since you had news?' She answered: 'Four years and seven days.' No whisper of the. fate of the nearest and dearest had reached them, nor had their letters gone. The Germans sold them special post-cards at high prices, and then destroyed the'mail. That is the sort of money-grubbing brutality to which tho civilians were treat-ed."—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.

PAST BRUTALITIES ECLIPSED

DREADFUL STORY FROM ROULERS. New York, October 21. Mr. Duranty, New York "Times" correspondent on tho French front, says:— "The Germans at Roulers perpetrated a tragedy almost unique even in the records of German cruelty. When tho order was given the inhabitants to leave their houses becauso the Allies wero advancing, a farmer and his wife and three children remained. The Germans found them, and butchered them in their own farmyard, whore their bodies wero discovered by French cavalry a few hours later. _ The majority of 25,000 inhabitants wore compelled tx> leave Roulers with the retreating Germans. Only a hundred of the population remained."—Aus.-N.Z, Cablo Assn.

LOATHED AS BRUTES AND BULLIES

(Rec.'October 22, 7.55 p.m.) London, October 21. Mr. Perry Eobinson, describing the German greed and devastation in the occupied districts, says: —"The populace suffered incredibly, and loathe, the German as a brute and a bully. Some of their potty fines were grotesque. All articles had to bo marked in the shops. Tf a tag fell off the first German passing imposed a fine of forty marks. If a dog followed its master to the open door a fine was imposed because dogs wore not allowed in the streets. I saw Bruges citizen rescuing valuable glassware from- the canal, the only place the Germans failed to scour and pillage. Even bits wero chipped off famous monument! as souvenirs. Bruges otherwise is no& damaged. The Ostend sea front is smashed, especially tho German emplacements, showing the exccllenco of our naval markmanship. Squads of German engineers wrecked the workshops of the great Compagnie Brugeoise, valued at a million sterling."—United Service.

ANOTHER IRISH PASSENGER STEAMER SUNK (Kec. October 23, 0.35 a.m.), London, October 22. Another Irish packet steamer, tho Dundalk, has been torpedoed in the Irish Sea. Thirteen of her crew of thirty have been landed.—Beuter.

NELSON DAY

FLORAL TRIBUTES ON THE 'MONUMENT. , London, October 21. The Nelson Column was bedecked with flowers on Trafalgar Day, the tributes including wreaths fiom Japan, Australia, New Zealand, anil other overseas Dominions, and also tributes from parents of lads who perished in the Jutland Haltle.-Aiis.-N7,. Cable Awn.